SOLINGEN, Germany (AP) — A knife-wielding assailant killed three people and seriously injured at least five others at a festival in the western German city of Solingen late Friday, authorities said.
Witnesses called police just after 9:30 pm to report an unidentified assailant with a knife randomly wounding several people in the central square of Vronhof. Police said the assailant is on the run and so far there is little information about him.
They said they believe the stabbing was the work of a lone perpetrator.
Philipp Muller, one of the festival’s organizers, appeared on stage and urged the audience to “stay calm. Keep your eyes peeled. Unfortunately the culprit has still not been caught.”
He said many people were injured by a “man with a knife.”
At least one helicopter was seen in the sky, numerous police and emergency vehicles with flashing blue lights were on the roads and several roads were closed.
Police put the number of seriously injured at five. The region’s top security official, Herbert Ruhl, who visited the scene early Saturday morning, put the number at six.
“Nobody knows why the attack happened,” said Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state.
“We can’t say anything at this point about a motive” and it’s unclear who the perpetrator was, but he said the gunman fled the scene “relatively quickly.”
“All of us in Solingen are in shock tonight. We wanted to celebrate our city’s anniversary together and now we are mourning the dead and injured,” Mayor Tim Kurtzbach said in a Facebook post.
“It is heartbreaking that an attack on our city has taken place,” he added.
“The atmosphere was eerie,” local newspaper Sollinger Tageblatt quoted festival reporter Celine Delicarts as saying, adding that the mood at the party turned to one of shock within minutes and that she saw festival-goers in tears.
The “Celebration of Diversity,” marking the city’s 650th anniversary, was scheduled to begin on Friday and run through Sunday, with several stages downtown offering live music, cabaret, acrobatics and other attractions.
After the attack, the city canceled the remainder of the festival. Solingen has a population of about 160,000 and is near larger cities such as Cologne and Düsseldorf.
There have been concerns about a recent rise in knife violence in Germany.
In May, an Afghan immigrant attacked members of a group describing itself as opposed to “political Islam” with a knife, leaving one police officer dead.
Germany’s chief security officer, Interior Minister Nancy Faser, has proposed tightening weapons laws to only allow knives with blades up to 6 centimetres (about 2.4 inches) in length in public, instead of the 12 centimetres (4.7 inches) currently permitted.
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Moulson reported from Berlin.
